Hi, Jeremy, I just composed a detailed response to you on my Iphone and with one eyelash-touch of my finger, I deleted the whole thing. Argh!

Hopefully, this will be equally thoughtful — I’m glad I read your poems before responding to you here. They are powerful and incredibly sad. I felt that there, I touched your heart, and I hope that this will take us out of the realm of “accusations.” You’re right, I know nothing about you. In fact, I hate all the opinion-bashing that takes place on line — I believe it essentially fuels hatred — yet here I was, participating in it!

THe only response to your comment that might be helpful is this: Accusations of harm are a complicated mix of very strong emotions and facts. Hence all the difficulties — the difficulties aren’t generally in the realm of facts at all. Unless I misunderstood you, you seemed to be saying that we could solve many of our problems by hewing to facts alone. That’s quite true, but unfortunately true of humans. The legal system tries, but we know how that often goes. I wish these things could be solved by rational means, but emotion is a greased pig. Come to think of it, pigs are kind of cool if you know how to relate to them. (Not that I do, but I am pretty familiar with the crazy animals of my emotions.) Anyway, I hope you will receive this as it was intended — a small gesture of friendship. Now to go deal with my blown tire…